An exhausted Quint discusses some BNAT goodies, including The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the Evil Dead reboot and the Guillermo del Toro produced Mama

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m starting writing this up over 40 hours after I woke up to attend BNAT and I haven’t slept (solidly) once. I think I’m going to turn into William Hurt in Altered States before I end up sleeping. If that happens, then you’ll likely see a more reasoned, thought out shift in this piece as I seriously doubt I’m going to finish all my coverage in one go.

With that in mind, I want to focus on a handful of my favorite BNAT moments and not try to cover every single second, especially since Nordling already did that and I like doing as little work as possible.

The first big holy shit moment of Butt-Numb-A-Thon was when Harry not only introduced the 2nd feature of the fest as being The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, but brought up Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens to share some words.

I’m in a bit of a tough spot with The Hobbit as I in no way can provide an unbiased opinion of the film, so I’m not going to log a full review for that reason. I saw way too much of the movie being made to fully separate myself from the process vs the final product.

I will say that I do love Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth universe and while it certainly does take its time to get going I find it hard to believe any LOTR fan won’t enjoy revisiting the Shire, meeting up with very old friends and a whole gaggle of new ones. I think people will look back on the first Hobbit film even more fondly over time as well because it has the large task of setting up multiple plotlines, some 14 main characters all at once and all while flipping past your eyeballs at a higher frame rate than you’re used to.

The question of 48fps or 24fps is not settled with me either, I’m afraid to say. My kneejerk is that I’m not a fan of the 48fps 3D presentation I saw. The trailers looked better lit, the sped-up motion given by higher frame rate really was jarring and made the film look a little like British TV. Whether that’s the intention I can’t tell. I can not pass any final judgment until I see the film in 24fps because it’s quite possible some of the issues I had with it were style and photographic choices made by Jackson and his DP Andrew Lesnie.

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the Riddles In The Dark sequence is just as good as anything in the LOTR films and if Andy Serkis wanted to play Gollum in a movie every year until he dies I wouldn’t complain.

It also my sad duty to announce that Mr. Fredegar Chubb didn’t make the theatrical cut of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The fish I sell Bilbo did indeed get cooked up, but Mr. Chubb is nowhere to be seen. I actually caught up with Peter after the film and got an immediate, heartfelt apology for cutting my big scene followed by a hearty promise that Fredegar Chubb will make a triumphant appearance in the eventual Extended Edition.

He also mentioned that the EE will be 20-25 minutes longer than the theatrical cut, but the real big news of the night is, of course, that the fish monger scene is in the film.

Peter answered a lot of questions from the audience about 48fps and said that he believes it’s an interesting experiment, but that high frame rate also only amounted to about 5% of the worldwide theatrical distribution of the film and that he didn’t feel everyone will like it. Basically he likes that there are multiple choices out there (2D and 3D 24fps, 2D and 3D 48fps and IMAX 3D for example) and the audiences will decide which they like the most.

He was also asked about Guillermo del Toro’s involvement and how much of it survived to the film we’ll be seeing and responded with a very frank and reasonable statement that Guillermo’s input was mainly in the first draft of the script, input into the characters and structure of the films and that Peter essentially went back to the drawing board in terms of design when Guillermo left. “The only person who should be making a Guillermo del Toro-looking movie is Guillermo del Toro,” Jackson said.

Speaking of Guillermo, a few hours later Guillermo showed up with the director and co-producer of Mama to screen and talk about that film as well as show some Pacific Rim stuff.

There were only three premieres (and one that I can’t talk about, that only goes by the codename Brain Damage and is technically a new movie, but falls hardcore in that “so bad it’s good” line of movies that I don’t really believe in… so I just thought it was hard to get through and found my only enjoyment of it was in sharing the war stories of surviving it with my fellow BNATers later): The Hobbit, Mama and Walter Hill’s Bullet to the Head. Mama was the biggest surprise of the night.

Mama was the biggest surprise of the night for me. I love that Guillermo shepherds young filmmakers whose visions fall within his personal passions. So you get movies like The Orphanage and now Mama that have del Toro’s fingerprints on them, but aren’t just rehashes of his personal vision.

The biggest success of Mama is in how we are made to empathize with everybody in the movie, whether it’s the punk rock bassist turned reluctant parental guardian played with great fun and realistic humanity by Jessica Chastain, the ex-feral girls who come to live with her (played by Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nelisse) or even Mama herself, a combination of Javier Botet’s unique movement work (he also played the creepy possessed big baddie in the REC films) and Hannah Cheesman’s face… twisted to horror movie standards, of course. No offense meant to Ms. Cheesman!

It is obvious that director Andres Muschietti and co-writers Neil Cross and Barbara Muschietti share Guillermo’s passion of injecting sympathy into movie monsters as Mama is creepy, insane, pissed off, scary and unpredictable, but also sad, lost and oddly protective. Mama is one of the most interesting new movie monsters to make its way to the screen in years.

Chastain makes a lot of her character, giving her multiple layers as she’s saddled with more and more responsibility for these young girls. What Luke Skywalker was to reluctant hero Chastain’s Annabel is to reluctant mother. Her arc is surprisingly emotional and multilayered for a genre film.

She also gets one of the best “smart people doing smart things in a horror movie” moments I’ve seen in recent years when she hears something move in a closet and young Victoria (Charpentier) tells her not to investigate it. I will say no more about that moment.

The only one to get the short end of the stick is Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau who takes a backseat about halfway through the film and feels surprisingly unimportant for the lead guardian character he started off as, but Annabel is the more interesting arc so I didn’t mourn that too much.

Visually the flick is sharp. Great cinematography, some incredibly effective creepy movement techniques with Mama and the feral children and some great design work on the monster. Mama’s a bit more digital than I’d like, but she’s so well designed and executed that I found myself not being as harsh as I tend to be with CG in horror.

And speaking of horror, I want to get to the Evil Dead footage we saw during the night’s festivities before I crash (and that’s happening super soon).

I may or may not have some interesting things to say about Fede Alvarez’s overall take on remaking/rebooting/rewhatevering Evil Dead, but that will have to wait until an embargo lift. I can, however, talk about the scene they showed us at BNAT.

Essentially we saw a Deadite transformation, which is hinted to us as one of the girls in the movie is in the bathroom looking for a needle (insulin, maybe?) and catches a glimpse of her face completely Deadite-d out, cheek missing, eyes all creepy, etc.

The takeover happens and we then find Lou Taylor Pucci looking for this girl, entering the bathroom and hearing a wet sawing sound (which is never a good thing to hear in movies or real life).

Of course he finds this girl cutting her face off with a broken mirror shard and then slips on a chunk of her cheek as the deadite attacks, stabbing him with the mirror shard and then going for the eyes with the needle. His thick glasses deflect most of the needle attacks, but it’s vicious and eventually we find out he didn’t make it out completely unscathed when he kicks the deadite off him and backs into a corner, realizing the needle has broken off in the baggy flesh area underneath his eye.

We get an extreme close up of of Pucci pulling this needle out and then bashing this girl’s brain in with a hunk of sink broken off during the fight, much to the horror of one of his friends who comes into the bathroom to find the horror show aftermath.

The camerawork was very fluid, with tons of motion throughout this sequence. Maybe not 100% Raimi, but definitely in the Evil Dead visual wheelhouse. The tone was what was interesting to me. They seem to be going for really hardcore imagery, practical gore effects and an overall viciousness I wasn’t expecting.

Time will tell if any of the fun of the series (even that first movie, as serious as it was compared to its sequels, had a certain fantasy fun factor) makes into this film or if it’s just dire from beginning to end, but either way I gotta say I liked what I saw.

If I had slept at all post-BNAT I’d finish my coverage out here, including looks at the many vintage titles and the rest of the sneak peaks (including World War Z’s opening 8 minutes, which was much better than the trailer, and the first trailer for Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain), but I did not and will not be able to finish tonight.

British TV once used a broadcast system called PAL, which was a higher video resolution than the American NTSC video format. The British imaged most of their TV fare on video, whereas a lot of American TV was imaged on 24FPS film, then transferred to video. This is why American TV looked more *filmic* than British TV back in the day.
With HDTV, the video format is basically the same, except that British video runs at 50Hz and American at 60hz, respectively. So, at this point, the *sped-up motion* won't *go down* any better in Britain, all things considered.

Waddya mean? Are you saying all British tv looks like the Keystone Cops? Our PAL 25 fps has always been superior to your 30 fps, but I thought in this age of HDTV you guys in the States had improved your television system. For the record, though, I'll be checking the Hobbit out in lower frame rate, just so they don't kick my arse at the box office.

Yknow just throw in the best moments from previous movies in some scrambled order or with different characters for cheap emotional manipulation like "needs of the many" and the hand to hand Vulcan thing through glass barrier.

I actually have a hard time watching today's high-end HDTVs -- particularly the ones set up for 3D -- because it actually appears to speed up the frame rate. Even stuff I've seen in Blu-Ray this way, particularly, THE AVENGERS, somehow looks oddly like it was shot on video. My brain can't wrap around it. I can see how 48fps would end up being a problem for the average viewer, even if it does enhance the 3D experience.</p><p>
Now comes a much bigger question: how in the fuck is this gonna impact Cameron's AVATAR sequels, which I heard he was planning to shoot at some ungodly 60fps?!?

Jacksons made 3 Tolkien movies & this batch will just be more of the same visually.
I'd much rather of seen a new interpretation from another visual master ala Guillermo.
But i've got Pacific Rim to look forward too, and judging by the tepid reviews of The Hobbit so far Pacific Rim will be better, it's got big Idris in it so what's not to like!

How in the holy hell is the frame rate supposed to make things look 'sped up'? It should make movements smoother, yes, but it can't make things move faster than they did at 24fps- if it did, the movie's soundtrack would be out of sync and the running time would be shorter. All that's changed is the temporal resolution.
Until I get the chance to see it (which given where I am may be some time) I'm going to have to assume that these complaints about 48fps are either based on some sort of weird optical illusion, or are purely psychosomatic.
Two more thoughts: Does anyone seriously think that Peter Jackson wouldn't have noticed if his opus looked like the Keystone Kops?
And intriguingly- has anyone sat a test audience in front of a 24fps movie, told them it was 48fps, and surveyed their reactions? I'd be very interested to see the results.

This effect happens if you keep picture enhancers on in modern HDTV-TV-Sets. You can get an absolutely soap free and natural picture if you
first turn an the movie/film-settings of your TV (as it stops overbrightening and oversharping the picture) and then - most important -
turn ALL picture enhancers OFF. This means searching for them in many sub-menues. This is stuff like tru-motion, antialiasing, everything that changes picture quality with computerized enhancers. They are the cause for this videolike picture-experience. If everything is turned off, you still have a supercrisp, beautiful picture, especially on 3D-TV-sets (as they provide better pictures on 2 D and 3 D anyway), but now it looks natural like on an old tube-TV.
My ALIEN-BluRay this way changed from a unwatchable 80ties-TV-show to the masterful supermovie i remembered.
All tried and tested on a Samsung.

"I can't talk about this movie code named BRAIN DAMAGE," and then in the next sentence revealing it was Bullet to the Head.
"I'll talk about Evil Dead when the embargo is lifted!" and then he describes the clip but also implies he hasnt see the whole movie.
I'll chalk that up to lack of sleep.

I'm so goddamn sick of how movie houses devote every IMAX (or large) screen to 3D. I understand that they want to make more money, but I don't effing WANT 3D, but I DO want the biggest, loudest experience I can get. That's the main reason I don't even bother to see most big movies in the theater anymore.

There IS regular 24fps IMAX 3D and then there is HFR IMAX 3D, but the latter seems to be the rare exception. For instance, HFR IMAX 3D is NOT playing in my city, and only two theaters here are showing HFR 3D.
I think you can find out what's playing in your city at The Hobbit website.

SHOT at 48 FPS I mean and PROPERLY PROJECTED AT 48 FPS can look look "sped up". Doesn't seem to make sense as the actual "speed" of the scene should remain consistent.
I would not sanely question the integrity of The Alamo, but I do wonder if maybe there some sync issues somewhere?

A bit confusing when Quint wrote ...
There were only three premieres (and one that I can’t talk about, that only goes by the codename Brain Damage and is technically a new movie ...
The inclusion of 'and', I took to mean 4,
three premiers (and ...
Otherwise it would be ... three premiers
(one that I can't talk about ...
Then there's this from another BNAT thread ...
by thebige
They played a pretty gory clip from the new Evil Dead, and if I'm interpreting Twitter hints correctly, did they play some awful no-budget film called "Fateful Findings" by Neil Breen? See a trailer at http://www.fatefulfindings.biz/trailer.html

Without the judder of 24fps it all looks too smooth and too fast. It's just an illusion, but that's the impression it creates, and lord help me I've tried, but it doesn't go away. Just run 24p material on your TV with Tru Motion or whatever your brand calls it and see. I'd guess it has to do with the whole persistence of motion idea - film isn't motion, but we learn early on to interpret it as such. We learn to equate a certain frequency of image projection as motion. We're asking our brains to suddenly accept a totally different frequency as motion now and for those of us who are adults that's just never going to fly. I bet if you brought a baby up on HFR material they'd have no problem with it. But then they'd have to deal with being bored to tears by the bloat of Hobbit so there's that...

Luke was never reluctant? What about when he told Old Ben that he could only take him as far as Anchorhead? He felt bound by his duties to Uncle Owen. Only when he raced home to find his aunt and uncle dead did he decide he no longer had any reason to stay. Classic hero's journey stuff there.

We get it you whiny little ass-clown! You are upset that a girl uses an electric knife to cut off her arm in the movie instead of a chainsaw... So stop your bitching and kick rocks bitch! Fucking idiot.

Mostly because of the complete lack of need for those who want to see the EE to buy the 'vanilla' version. The EE, one would assume, will match the LOTR versions in regards to their appendices also, and that would be very cool indeed. I also like knowing ahead of time that if I'm watching any of the Hobbit movies and think, "hey, something is missing there" (be it book, appendix or just a story beat) I can hopefully look forward to seeing it on the blu-ray. Lastly, as I mentioned in the first review, I really enjoyed the pace of the EE's of the LOTR. I enjoy immersing myself in the world that Jackson and WETA have created for us. I really hoping the EE Hobbits will be the same way.